As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
As processors, graphics cards, random access memory (RAM) and other components in information handling systems have increased in clock speed and power consumption, the amount of heat produced by such components as a side-effect of normal operation has also increased. Often, the temperatures of these components need to be kept within a reasonable range to prevent overheating, instability, malfunction and damage leading to a shortened component lifespan. Accordingly, thermal management systems including air movers (e.g., cooling fans and blowers) have often been used in information handling systems to cool information handling systems and their components. Various input parameters to a thermal management system, such as measurements from temperature sensors and inventories of information handling system components are often utilized by thermal management systems to control air movers and/or throttle power consumption of components in order to provide adequate cooling of components.
However, instances may exist in which a thermal management system may not have sufficient input parameters in order to adequately determine thermal health of various components. For example, Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) and other input/output (I/O) cards are a common example of a component that in many typical information handling system topologies, lacks sufficient thermal data in order for efficient thermal control. Thermal control of many such cards typically includes generating an automatic or manually-configured predefined air mover response which is static in nature and does not dynamically take into account varying thermal parameters of an information handling system. A disadvantage of this approach is that it must assume a worst-case scenario, meaning more airflow may be used to cool such I/O cards than may actually be required to operate correctly, leading to wasted electrical power required to operate air movers. Another disadvantage of this approach is that expecting users to manually configure cooling levels for I/O card cooling may be risky and may provide a bad user experience.
As another example, many information handling system components may not be capable of reporting their temperatures. Accordingly, thermal management of such components may include setting minimum open loop air mover speeds which may be defined based on system characterization during design and development of an information handling system, and may require extensive testing to determine optimum air mover speeds.
As a further example, many information handling systems may allow a user to adjust thermal behavior (e.g., maximum exhaust temperatures, minimum difference between inlet temperature and exhaust temperature, etc.) of such information handling systems. However, such user options often do not take into account system state (e.g., hardware configuration, ambient temperature, etc.), such that a user may still be given options to select thermal behavior options that might be unobtainable. Accordingly, when such options are selected by a user, a system may be incapable of satisfying the selection option, leading to user confusion or other poor user experience.